"Friendship, loss and the everyday populate Packer’s canvases, full of disquieting detail." –Adrian Searle, The Guardian
Through a uniquely textural style of oil painting that evokes the fluidity of watercolors, Jennifer Packer recasts classical genres in a fresh political and contemporary light while keeping them rooted in a deeply personal context. Combining observation, improvisation and memory, Packer’s intimate portraits of friends and family members and flower paintings insist on the particularity of the Black lives she depicts. The title of this volume refers to an ecclesiastical description of the insatiable human quest for divine knowledge; with this in mind, Packer’s work urges viewers to understand and appreciate the unique dimensions of Black lives beyond just the physical. Richly illustrated, this volume includes texts by fellow painters Dona Nelson and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, professors Rizvana Bradley and Christina Sharpe, and an interview between the artist and Serpentine Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist.
American painter Jennifer Packer (born 1984) grew up in Philadelphia and received her MFA from Yale University in 2012. She was formerly the Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2012–13) and a Visual Arts Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA (2014–16). She currently works as an assistant professor of painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. Packer is represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co in New York City, where the artist lives.
